The fashion industry wage gap—the difference between legal minimum wages and living wages—has widened this year, with the gap increasing by 3.5% over last year to 48.5%.
- The wage gap metric is from multi-stakeholder initiative The Industry We Want (TIWW), which released its new dashboard at the sidelines of the OECD Forum on Due Diligence in the Garment and Footwear Sector in Paris.
The Metrics: The new Industry Dashboard features the second cycle of industry-wide scores on three critical issues in the sector: the wage gap, purchasing practices, and GHG emissions.
- It has been created in partnership with the WageIndicator Foundation, the Better Buying Institute (BBI) and the Apparel Impact Institute (AII) to present annual impact metrics.
- The Dashboard aims to drive better data, stimulate progress, support alignment and encourage information exchange, collaboration and policy change where necessary.
The State of Affairs:
- The most significant wage gap increase has been reported in Morocco, Peru and Hungary.
- The GHG metric shows an increase of greenhouse gas emissions by 0.87% to 896.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, mainly due to slight growth in fibre use and other factors. To stay within a 1.5°C trajectory — achieving a 45 % reduction by 2030 — the sector would need to reduce emissions from 0.889 Gt in 2019 to 0.489 Gt by 2030.
- The metric on purchasing practices is the only one showing minimal improvement: an increase by one point from 39 to 40 compared to 2022, mainly due to buyers increasing recognition of the importance of fair financial practices and timely forecasting.
- On the flip side, the individual sub-scores also indicate a decline in business stability and the visibility buyers provide to suppliers regarding their order planning.
The Metrics:
- The purchasing practices metric uses data gathered by the BBI’s Partnership Index Survey, synthesising feedback on 160 buyer companies from more than 1000 suppliers across 54 countries, with a quarter of the ratings from supplier companies headquartered in China (24.1%), and other large contributors being Bangladesh (8.7%), Hong Kong (7.8%) and Turkey (6.7%).
- The wage metric, devised in partnership with the WageIndicator Foundation, illustrates the gap between legal minimum wages and living wages in 28 garment sector manufacturing countries with the aim of collecting real wage data.
The GHG emissions metric draws data from Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Higg, and Textile Exchange and the AII to estimate the annual apparel greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
What They Said:
This year's The Industry We Want dashboard highlights the need to take action. Not tomorrow, but today. To drive systemic change, we need all actors in the supply chain to collaborate in equal partnerships. Let's walk the talk together.
— Alexander Kohnstamm
Executive Director
Fair Wear Foundation
